GREENFIELD — At 10 years old, Brooklyn McConnell never expected to be playing competitive basketball on the national level.
Yet last month she found herself competing in the 2018 junior NBA skills challenge in Brooklyn, New York. As Greenfield’s newest NBA all-star stepped onto the court, she looked around at the other competitors in the 11 and under girls division.
The other girls towered over Brooklyn, who stands at just 4 foot 8 inches tall, but she took a deep breath and focused on what her mother told her moments earlier: Relax, take your turn, and make your shots, she’d said. When the whistle blew, the nerves disintegrated, and Brooklyn did what she does best.
Brooklyn, an incoming sixth-grader at Maxwell Middle School, took home a champion’s trophy in June after winning first place in Verizon’s Junior NBA competition. More than 66,000 players take part in the nationwide shooting and ball handling contest every year, and this year the short yet swift 10-year old was named first in the country.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
The challenge consisted of scoring the individual’s ability to make shots at various spots on the court in a one-minute blitz, said Brooklyn’s mother, Emily McConnell. After dribbling through a set of orange cones, players need to score as many points as possible within the time limit, adjusting their score based on the shots they made. Six points are awarded for a shot made at the 3-point line, closer outside shots are worth three or four points and a layup is worth one, she said.
Brooklyn made the top three in the local regional qualifier held in February. The winners of eight regional competitions across the country would be the finalists to compete in New York this summer.
After winning the regional competition in Indianapolis, Brooklyn was headed for Brooklyn.
“She was worried because she’s kind of on the littler side, which she doesn’t like to talk about,” Emily McConnell said. “There was a girl in her division who was taller than me, a 6-foot-tall fifth-grader.”
But McConnell told her daughter not to be fazed by their size. You don’t have to beat them one-on-one, she’d told her. You only need to out-shoot them.
And she complied. Brooklyn said she’d made most of her shots. In another moment, she was the junior-NBA champion in her age division, nationwide.
Brooklyn comes from a long line of basketball players, McConnell said. With a grandpa and an uncle with a combined 20 years of coaching experience, along with an older sister with some serious skills of her own, basketball is sort of a family tradition, she said.
Now Brooklyn plays for the fifth-grade Cougars basketball team, and she makes sure to keep her skills sharp in the off-season, too, McConnell said. Add onto that the hours of extra practice Brooklyn puts in, shooting hoops in the driveway, her finding success at a young age comes at no surprise, she said.
“I love being able to compete, and just everything really,” Brooklyn said with a shy smile.
Brooklyn is a soft-spoken young lady, but she’s got heart seen by the most determined athletes, said Katie Brown, Brooklyn’s head coach. Brown has coached Brooklyn for two years, and quickly learned that while Brooklyn doesn’t enjoy the spotlight, she certainly deserves to be in it.
“She’s one of those kids described as a gym rat,” Brown said. “She’s got a drive like no other.”
“She’s a coach’s dream, really,” Brown added. “She knows the game, she loves the game, and she’ll do anything she can to be around the game.”
Even at 10-years-old, Brown sees a bright future for Brooklyn, who is one of the most determined and intelligent girls she’s seen at that age.
“She’ll definitely be a high school ball player one day,” Brown said. “I don’t think anyone will be able to out-work her.”
